But you may not be aware of this critical piece of information: Completely Unheard Of Games get expansion packs, too!

Like Space Hulk Death Angel: Deathwing Space Marine. ( <– this is a real game)

And Rogue Trader: Citadel of Skulls ( <– also a real game),which, as far as I can tell, is a role-playing game about parenthood where “the great beast” is clearly Sleeplessness, as in “a great beast has awakened, hungering to fulfill its dark purpose. Before you and your fellow Explorers can attempt to seek it out and ultimately destroy it, you must uncover what and where it is. Finding the answer is a nearly impossible undertaking…”

And I’ve gotta hand it to those Rogue Trader folks, ’cause that’s about as accurate a description of Parental Sleeplessness as I’ve ever read.

But I have a point, and it is this: games get expansion packs! And it’s time for one here.

Remember when we played I Spy: A Thanksgiving Game? The game played by moving the living room couch, finding massive heinousness underneath it, photo documenting it, and then forcing you, our friends on the internet, to identify what might be in the giant pile of gross?

This fun game?

Yes. Me, too!

Good times, friends. Good times.

Well, because I love you,

and because I wisely let 10 children have the run of our house on New Year’s Eve,

and because I braved the kitchen on New Year’s Day anyway,

and because I reveled in the gloriousness they left behind,

it’s time for…

I Spy: A New Year’s Game

Here’s how this will work.

I’m going to share pictures of the stunning mess that was our kitchen, and you’re invited to identify one thing by making an I Spy comment in the comment section below, like this, “I Spy enough sugar, simple carbohydrates and empty calories to power New York City for 47 days; how many tubs of frosting can 10 kids eat, Beth??”

OK, then. Ready?

Here we go.

In other words, Happy Schadenfreude, friends! From our family to yours,

And because games are more fun with prizes…

Today is Day 10 in 7+ Days of Giveaways

I invited the 5 Kids Blog advertisers (see the column to your right) to join me for 7 (and more!) days of giveaways. CHECK BACK for a NEW GIVEAWAY EVERY DAY. ( <– Lies. I’m not this organized. So check back periodically, instead, for new giveaways. We’re almost done with these, but we’ve got a couple more coming!)

Today, our friend Emily is giving away a little something for Happy Hands for the Winter! A nourishing, patented lotion which kicks winter-dry skin to the curb, and a hand-wash dish liquid soap that cleans the dishes without harming your skin. Two of the over 350 products in our non-toxic line of everyday items! Your hands will thank you for it. For both products, a little bit goes a long way. Buying club prices: $9.99 for the 8 ounce lotion bottle and $3.79 for concentrated dishwashing soap.

From any comments that correctly identify something in the Pile of Awesomeness, I will randomly draw 1 winner to receive Emily’s Happy Hands set.

This giveaway is now closed. Congratulations to our Happy Hands winner, Sarah T who wrote “I spy a paper towel roll that miraculously isn’t empty!”

TO ENTER: Leave a comment on this blog post by 11:59pm (Pacific Time) on Sunday, January 5th. One entry per person, please. A winner will be selected using a random number generator and posted on Friday.

This giveaway is open to international participants. International shipping provided by me.

Note: The 5 Kids Blog advertisers provided no additional compensation for these giveaways. Emily is paying for the cost of the giveaway and U.S. shipping. She paid me for her ad only, and this just seemed like a fun way to work together for your benefit. OK? OK.

But not fast enough for my other son who said, “THAT makes sense. He’s a very dirty otter, Mama, and so is his penis. That’s why he has to suck on his penis. And suck and suck and suck and SUCK. And just keep on sucking. On his penis.”

“Yeah!” exclaimed his brother. “He is very best Otter Penis Cleaner I EVER SAW, Mom! He is really washing the heck out of that thing.”

I stood watching my Community of Otter Watchers beat their retreat as fast as that little otter could clean himself.

Which is exactly the moment the enormous, fierce, neck-tattooed biker dude burst out laughing and kept going ’til he cried, wiping occasionally at the rivers of tears falling into his scruffy beard.

And it was exactly the moment, too, I realized my Community was still there. 100% in tact — the biker dude, the 5-year-old boys, the otters, and me — Otter Admirers, every one.

Happy Thanksgiving Eve, friends. And if you’re not from the U.S., Happy Thanksgiving Eve, anyway; I promise to eat extra helpings of all my favorite foods for you over the next few days. It’s part of the international service we like provide here at the 5 Kids blog. You’re welcome.

Late last night, Greg moved our couch to make room for the long Thanksgiving table.

This is what we found:

Yes, we did.

Please note that this pie is in my oven right now, though:

Which makes us All the Things. Both/And, friends; BOTH living in couch filth and squalor AND making rustic chic pies.

When I posted this on Facebook this morning, to share our Happy Schadenfreude moment with you all,

…Shauna Wagner, a friend of this blog, commented that it looks like an I Spy game.

BRILLIANT, Shauna!

So now that’s what it is.

Welcome toI Spy: A Thanksgiving Game

I’m going to share 2 pictures of the stunning mess that was under our couch, and you’re invited to identify one thing by making an I Spy comment in the comment section below, like this, “I Spy a pink M&M, left over from last Easter, perhaps?” Or, “I Spy a tiny, brown, wrinkled, petrified Satsuma orange. Since those only come out at Christmas time, I can only guess when that rolled under the couch.”

From any comments that correctly identify something in the Pile of Awesomeness, I will randomly draw 5 winners to receive an original, printed-on-our-only-works-sometimes-printer postcard of something else in our house with a note thanking you for being part of our weird, wonky, wonderful community. The postcard could be pretty. It could be gross. It’s anyone’s guess, really.

Entries for the drawing can be submitted until 10:00 p.m., Wednesday, November 27th, Pacific Standard Time. So, you know, today. Comments, as always, welcome anytime.

OK, then. Ready?

Here we go.

What do you spy?

You know, besides a mama who’s lost her ever-loving mind.

UPDATE!

Thanks to all of you who played I Spy. Your answers were AWESOME, and I feel like I’m in very, very good company now. Still laughing at how well you GET IT. I drew winners for the postcards using a random number generator, and I included all of you who entered after the deadline, because I’m a rule-breaker and it gets worse the older I get. Rules Schmules. Here are our 5 drawing winners:

MickiLori RicardKatrina CollinsAlmiraStacie

Congrats!

Send your address to me at FiveKidsIsALotOfKids@gmail.com and I’ll pop those in the mail! They might include a picture of my bathroom mirror which has a note in lipstick from my daughter that reads “Happy Mother’s Day!” Yep – from last May. ‘Cause cleaning bathroom mirrors is a bottom-of-list task around here. With, um, a lot of other tasks.

Happy Thanksgiving!

……….

P.S. It’s OK if you needed to dry-heave a little after seeing those pics. Me, too.

P.P.S. No need to put your address in the comments section. I’ll email winners and you can send me your address privately. Also, this is totally open to international participants. Play on!

It’s not that I mind having a unicorn around, it’s just the enormous mounds of poo I have to shovel, you know? Because let me tell you, contrary to popular opinion, unicorns do not poop rainbows and kittens which, when you really stop to think about it, is half sad and half oh thank GOD because I do not need literal buttloads of kittens running around here. Unicorns poop poop, friends. And, yes, it’s laced with glitter, but, as my friend Katrina always says, glitter is the herpes of the craft world – you can try to clean it up, but it never really goes away – and that is not a good thing.

So now I have a unicorn, which is, as you might suspect, horse-sized, marking its territory in my back yard. My back yard isn’t even big enough for the gopher who lives there; it certainly can’t accommodate a unicorn. But the unicorn doesn’t seem to care. It just wanders around pooping its glitter poop and eating the dandelion garden that, until now, was doing a passable job pretending to be a lawn.

I feel like I should back up a step. The poop has me flustered, and I’m telling this all out of order.

A unicorn followed Aden home from school last night. I don’t know exactly how it happened since Aden rides the bus and I’m almost positive the bus has a No Unicorns Policy, but she walked in the front door, dumped her backpack on floor next to all the other kids’ backpacks (and art projects and jackets and Things That Live Permanently in the Entry Way), kicked off her shoes, and hollered, “MOM?”

“DON’T YELL! COME FIND ME,” I yelled back.

So she trudged up the stairs, every reluctant step calculated to communicate how very annoying it was to walk all the way to my room to talk, and then said brightly, “There’s a unicorn in the yard. Can I keep her?”

Well, there are a lot of thoughts that go through a mama’s head when her kid makes an announcement like that. Namely, how to get out of going with her to look because, honestly, if I went to look every time someone yelled “MOM” or “THERE’S A…” I’d only have time to follow my children around. Unfortunately, the “can I keep her” question upped the ante, so, even though I obviously knew it wasn’t a real unicorn, the chances were high that it was something alive and that I needed to get us out of pet-ownership again.

I went with her to take a look.

And guess what?

There was a unicorn standing in my front yard.

A giant, gleaming, pristine, breathing unicorn.

In my front yard.

Which was a surprise.

Although maybe not as much of a surprise as you might expect, for two reasons.

First, we once had this exact scenario happen with a cow, so we’re somewhat used to large animals taking a dump in the front yard. The cow, it seems, escaped from the field behind our house and wandered around to the front ’til it was just standing there on the front lawn which was made out of grass at the time and not dandelions because the house and yard were new and we hadn’t had five kids yet so we still cared what people thought about our yard. My oldest daughter, Abby, who was 3, saw the cow and said, “MOM? There’s a cow in our front yard.” I didn’t believe her, but, like the lawn so aptly indicates, things were different then and I still responded to MOM and THERE’S A, so I went to take a look at what she thought was cow, and, yep; it was a cow. An entire cow. Standing in my front yard.

So the unicorn was the cow all over again.

Except it was a unicorn. So… not a cow.

The second reason I wasn’t as surprised as you might think about a unicorn hanging out next to the shrubbery is the fact that we’ve had a fairy princess hiding in the cherry tree behind our house for the last 10 years. Her name is Sarah (which I know is more “Jewish princess” and less “fairy princess,” but don’t ask me, I didn’t name her), and we’re definitely not supposed to know about her, but, while she’s very sneaky, she has an unquenchable passion for craft supplies and breakfast cereal, so she raids our house at night scattering honey nut cheerios, fruit loops, tiny scraps of paper and oceans of glitter glue in her wake… which, it just occurred to me may not be glitter glue, after all, if she’s buddies with any unicorns.

Gross.

But what I’m saying is, we’re not totally unfamiliar interacting with the supernatural world.

All of which brings me back to the unicorn standing in the middle of my front yard.

Breathing.

Or, to be more accurate, it was breathing and snorteling, which is that sweet, heavy breathing / snoring sound babies make when they’re happy and full and finally, blissfully asleep. And, OK, snorteling isn’t technically a real word, but since we’re talking about unicorns here, I figure I have some leeway.

So there was the unicorn, breathing and snorteling in my front yard. And pooping glittery poop. And there was Aden, looking at me with wide, hopeful eyes, hands folded together in a desperate, prayerful plea. And there were her brothers, joining us on the front porch with soft exclamations like, “whoa…” and “is that real?” as Aden asked one more time, “Can I keep her, Mom? Plleeease?”

I said no.

Of course I said no.

Because who says yes to keeping a unicorn?

No one is who.

But no one ever listens to me.

Especially not children and unicorns.

Which is how we ended up with a unicorn in the backyard. And why my yard looks – literally – like crap.

2. No playing in your own pee stream. No playing in pee streams in general. Under certain circumstances, and using your own equipment, exceptions can be made for activities like peeing straight down into snow and then measuring for comparison. I mean, I’m not a monster.

4. If you’ve ever wondered what it sounds like to pee on the wall or in the garbage can or on the floor or in the toy bin or inside the garage or behind your bed, IT SOUNDS LIKE PEE. STOP IT.

5. A swimsuit is for getting wet. A swimsuit is not for wetting. Don’t pee in the pool. More importantly, when you do pee in the pool, don’t announce it. Announcing it includes both verbal and nonverbal clues. Verbal clues include hollering, “I just peed in the pool, Mom! It made a nice warm spot! Come feel!” Nonverbal clues include scrambling out of the pool, grabbing your private parts and then watching the pee dribble down your legs.

6. Pee is not stamps or coins or baseball cards or comic books. Don’t collect it.

7. Yes, of course you can pee outside. In fact, from March-October that’s required. Usual rules apply. Keep it off the porch. Be sneaky. Keep your bits to yourself. Don’t get arrested. Pretend like you use the potty when guests come over.

8. You can all pee further than your brothers. I know this doesn’t seem possible, but you’re going to have to trust me; no need to keep proving it.

Today, I’m thrilled to introduce you to my friend and penpal, Fiona Merrick, the smart and witty writer behind the delightful blog, Writing in the Sky. Like me, Fiona utterly fails at niche writing, dabbling in a little bit of everything, which always keeps me entertained and coming back for more. Also, I admit to a certain, extreme level of glee every time Fiona documents her sons’ mishaps with talcum powder or icing sugar; I just feel so understood when I see her home riddled with mess, though, you know?

I hope you enjoy Fiona as much as I do.

Beth Woolsey

P.S. Because Fiona is from the U.K., I read absolutely everything she writes in a Mary Poppins voice. I’m certain I’m being culturally sensitive and entirely accurate when I do so. You might at least try to be more mature than me.

……….

Cat Sick and the Power of Vulnerabilityby Fiona Merrick

I’d like, if I may, to begin this post by initiating a game with which I know many of you are already very familiar: Good News / Bad News. Beth taught me how to play it, and it’s one of my very favourites. Ready?

Good News: this morning, I flipped our mattress for the first time in years.

Bad News: I was forced to flip the mattress because the cat vomited lavishly all over the bottom sheet of the unmade bed before the day had properly drawn breath, and furthermore was also forced to wash all the bed linen, which was only laundered last week. Those sheets had plenty of mileage left in them yet, I don’t mind telling you.

Good News: today was sunny and warm here in north-east England, so – miracle of miracles – even the super-king-size duvet cover had time to dry outside on the washing line.

Bad News: both my boys have summer colds, and I caught one of them walking right into the newly-spotless and recently-dried duvet cover this afternoon as it blew gently in the breeze, wiping his streaming nose all over it in the process.

Good News: nowadays, my standards are very low indeed and I’m going to sink into that bed tonight irrespective of vomit, snot or indeed any other unpleasant substance that comes my way between now and then.

I know you understand, you mamas of one or two or five or ten kids; I know you relate and empathise and get it, because that’s why most of us are here, isn’t it? We read to know we’re not alone, said CS Lewis, and that’s sure as heck one of the many reasons I show up here at Five Kids Is A Lot Of Kids every time Beth blesses us with a new post, because the honesty and the sharing and the warm sense of community we all find here reminds us that we’re not alone. And we need that, don’t we? We need to know that we’re not the only one. I know I need that reassurance, sometimes desperately and urgently.

So I share my cat-sick story – and I have a hundred similar tales to tell – in case something similar has happened in your household this week, so you know that someone’s standing alongside you in all the mess and unpredictability, telling you you’re not alone. You’re not the only one who’s struggling with this parenting lark. You’re not the only one who didn’t have time to deal with an unscheduled cat-sick incident today. You’re not the only one whose house usually looks as if you’ve been recently burgled. You’re not alone. Solidarity’s where it’s at, and I try to embrace this beautiful truth a little more every day, amidst the hilarious uncontrollability of life with children.

I have an initimate friend – the Diana Barry to my Anne Shirley – who reminds me of this often, just by showing up weekly and empathising with me every time. Fiona and I met in our first week of college; named the same and studying Music together, it was inevitable that our paths would cross, but I prefer to call it providential. Almost two decades later, we’re both still living in our university city and bringing up sons, and she visits my house every Friday for coffee and conversation. I could rhapsodise at length about any one of her amazing qualities as a person – and there are dozens from which to choose – but it’s the honesty that I particularly cherish, the honesty which she encourages and offers, and which allows me to say here I am, with a thousand imperfections – let’s be friends who tell each other the truth, shall we?

I know I can open the door to her wearing ripped jeans and no make-up, hair wild and house wilder, and she’ll hug me warmly and step over the scattered toys on her way to my grubby kitchen which never seems to get any cleaner, try though I honestly do. There, we’ll eat and talk and laugh and share and tell truths about the messy corners of our respective lives. And here’s the thing: Fi doesn’t judge me for the things I can’t manage; instead, she tells me about the things with which she struggles as a mother. She never comments on the Lego bricks dotted underfoot or the piles of laundry dropped randomly throughout my comically and chronically untidy home; instead, she tells me about her daily battle with toys and dirty clothes. There’s no need to maintain an artificial façade of domestic competence in front of her, because I know I have her total understanding, which in return means she has both my trust and my honesty.

In eighteen years of friendship, we’ve built something within which we can give and receive each other’s confessions like a gift: a now-unspoken sense of you-show-me-yours-and-I’ll-show-you-mine, which is all the more precious now we’re walking the mothering road together. Her willingness to make herself vulnerable in my company gives me the strength to be vulnerable myself: vulnerable in my imperfection as both a parent and a person.

And it’s powerful, isn’t it, this thing called vulnerability? It’s freeing. Liberating. Another person’s willingness to open themselves up invites us to do the same, reciprocating in kind, completing the circle and perpetuating the wonderful truth that imperfection is, after all, the reality here. It’s what enables us to draw one another into a community, one by one, calling out there is room for you here, and you’re warmly welcomed as we do so.

And I think that’s what we all need and crave, secretly or openly: the opportunity to feel included somewhere, weaknesses and all, with encrusted clothing and unbrushed hair, barely erect with weariness and carrying a unique set of burdens, yet still accepted by others. The load is much, much lighter when it’s shared by two or by many, which is just one of the many reasons why I love and value my friend Fiona so very deeply, and why I keep showing up at Beth’s place every time she offers us, her readers and friends, another fragment of her mama-heart. Those freely-given glimpses of another’s life, mess and all, help me to stumble through the imperfections of my own, and even to find the humour in something as outrageously disgusting as a bedful of cat sick.

……….

Fiona Merrick is the writer behind Writing in the Sky as well as a stay-at-home mother and former high-school teacher. She lives in the north-east of England with her husband Ben, sons Joshua and Daniel and cat Mandu.

We went from “I feel sick” to Vomit Lift-Off in 1.5 hours today. I consider this a victory.

I mean, it’s not a family record or anything. We’ve had middle-of-the-night and out-of-a-dead-sleep yarfing episodes that carry a zero-to-TAKE-COVER rating, so there’s no real competition left there. It’s just, I don’t know, when there’s a kid who’s sort of generally blah without any other overt symptoms and I have to make The Call — send him to school or keep him home — it sometimes takes a while before I get any real feedback.

It’s like being a NASA project manager at every launch ever. You know the launch is coming. You trained for this. You’ve done it before. You’re following protocol. Marking the check-list. The engines are on. All signs are go. The ground is shuddering. The crowds are enraptured. But you don’t know until the very last second if this one’s gonna take off… or fizzle.

This can go on for hours. Sometimes for days. And it’s nerve-wracking. For the project manager and for the poor little guy stuck in the ship.

This time, though? Sometimes it all comes together, friends. The timing. The boy. The bucket. Like a well-oiled machine. Lift-off. Vomit Victory, baby!

……….

P.S. If you’d have told me at the beginning of the mama game that one day I’d consider this kind of day a victory, I’d’ve cried at my future patheticness. This is why they don’t let us have crystal balls, people. It’s for our own good.

……….

P.P.S. The boy that shaved his head is the same boy who has raging poison oak is the same boy who barfed so successfully this morning. Now, he has access to unlimited Popsicles which makes the entire week, in his words, “TOTALLY WORTH IT, MOM.”

And that’s exactly the kind of perspective he’s gonna need to be an awesome, if somewhat delusional, parent some day.